Linda M. Milosky

Associate Professor Communication Sciences and Disorders

Research and Teaching Interests

Professor Milosky specializes in language acquisition and disorders, with specific interest in cognitive, linguistic, and social aspects of discourse processing in normal and clinical populations. Her work includes the study of children's acquisition of figurative language, particularly idioms and irony, and the various factors that assist children in interpreting such language.

She currently directs a 5-year personnel preparation grant from the Office of Special Education Programs of the US Department of Education. The grant provides scholarships to master's students in speech-language pathology to enhance development of expertise in:

connections between oral and written language development during preschool;

the unique needs of children who come from high poverty backgrounds;

the techniques for developing behavioral competencies and school readiness skills that children need in order to benefit from preschool environment.

An innovative element of the grant is that students will learn to implement data‐driven therapy through the use of single-subject designs in both clinic and school settings. In designing these interventions, they will use evidence-based techniques, learning how to translate large‐scale research to everyday practice. More information about the scholarship grant can be found on our website or Facebook page.

Milosky, L. (1994). The role of world knowledge in language comprehension and language intervention. In Butler, K. (ed.) Early intervention I: Working with infants and toddlers. Gaithersburg, Md.: Aspen.

Milosky, L. (1992). Children listening: The role of world knowledge in language comprehension. In Chapman, R. (ed.) Child Talk: Processes in language acquisition. Chicago, Il: Mosby Year Book, 20-44.

Journal Articles

Ford, J. and Milosky, L. (2008). Inference generation during discourse and its relation to social competence: An on-line investigation of abilities of children with and without language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 51, 367-380.

Milosky, L., & Serlin, R. (1984). Violations of ANOVA assumptions in language research: Consequences and alternatives. Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Recent Presentations

Milosky, L. and Hahn, Y. (2011) Context modality and quality of responses to idiom definition task. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, San Diego, CA.

Milosky, L., Ford, J., Lightburn, A., and Edwards, M. (2011) Improving English proficiency of international teaching assistants: A systemic approach. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, San Diego, CA.

Burnett, D. & Milosky, L. (2009) What we say matters: Irony comprehension and language impairment. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, New Orleans, LA.

Ford, J. and Milosky, L. (2008). Macaroni, mommy, monsters: Emotion situation responses of children with language impairment. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.